Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications, and more specifically, to a method and apparatus for switching a connection in a wireless communication system.
Related Art
Universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) is a 3rd generation (3G) asynchronous mobile communication system operating in wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) based on European systems, global system for mobile communications (GSM) and general packet radio services (GPRS). A long-term evolution (LTE) of UMTS is under discussion by the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) that standardized UMTS.
The 3GPP LTE is a technology for enabling high-speed packet communications. Many schemes have been proposed for the LTE objective including those that aim to reduce user and provider costs, improve service quality, and expand and improve coverage and system capacity. The 3GPP LTE requires reduced cost per bit, increased service availability, flexible use of a frequency band, a simple structure, an open interface, and adequate power consumption of a terminal as an upper-level requirement.
Small cells using low power nodes are considered promising to cope with mobile traffic explosion, especially for hotspot deployments in indoor and outdoor scenarios. A low-power node generally means a node whose transmission (Tx) power is lower than macro node and base station (BS) classes, for example a pico and femto eNodeB (eNB) are both applicable. Small cell enhancements for 3GPP LTE will focus on additional functionalities for enhanced performance in hotspot areas for indoor and outdoor using low power nodes.
Currently, it is expected that the trend of mobile wireless networks will be toward the denser deployment of small cells for capacity enhancement. By increasing the number of small cells, end-users can be physically located closer to the network and therefore, the data capacity would be significantly improved. However, when considering the deployment of large number of small cells, some technical issues made from the differences between small cell deployment and macro cell deployment should be carefully identified and solved. As an example, though the turn on/off of macro cells is an important characteristic for macro cell deployment in terms of energy saving, such an aspect should also be further emphasized for small cell deployment. The reason is that the dynamic turn on/off of large number of small cells might have some RAN impacts.
A fast radio resource control (RRC) connection switching method in small cells with dynamic turn on/off may be required.